HOLLAND, MI -- Darryl Bartlett can hardly fathom why someone would choose to sleep in a Dumpster rather than in a mission bed.

But that's exactly what a 46-year-old Muskegon man did Thursday, May 1, nearly losing his life when he was tossed into a garbage truck and almost crushed.

"There is a segment out there that has an aversion to anything with some kind of structure," said Bartlett, executive director of Holland Rescue Mission.

The Muskegon man is now recovering at Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital from broken ribs, a broken collar bone and a mouth injury. He escaped death by yelling and pounding on the wall of the Waste Management truck, alerting the driver that he was trapped inside.

By that time, he already had evaded the compactor once by maneuvering himself over the hydraulic plate used to compress trash.

"It's a miracle he is alive," Bartlett said. "God definitely preserved his life."

Bartlett said the man could have stayed Thursday night at the Rescue Mission.

"Our beds are not full and we didn't refuse anyone last night," he said. "If a person had come here at 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. last night, we would have housed him."

Police said the man climbed into the Dumpstser, near Parkview Apartments at Ninth Street and Columbia Avenue, about 9 p.m. Thursday to get out of the wet and cold conditions.

He awoke when he was falling into the garbage truck. It was then that he maneuvered to escape the compactor. Moments later and a few blocks away, the driver stopped in the 100 block of East 11th Street to collect trash from another Dumpster.

At that point, the trapped man began yelling and pounding. The driver called 911 and Holland firefighters used a ladder to access the top of the truck and pull the man out.